The New Testament biographies of Jesus, usually referred to as the Gospels, contain the most extensive records of what Jesus did and of what he taught. But it is also in connection with these same biographies that readers of the New Testament encounter difficult problems. How are these records to be evaluated? To what extent do they reveal what actually happened, and to what extent do they merely indicate what the author believed to have happened? Answering these questions by asserting that these are all inspired writings and are therefore infallible in every respect will not do. Divine inspiration is always and necessarily a two-fold process involving both a giving and a receiving. The giving may well be regarded as the divine part, but the receiving or the understanding of whatever it is that has been revealed is the human part, and that which is human is never infallible. Anyone who is at all sympathetic with the meaning and message of the New Testament will not be hesitant about regarding it as a divinely inspired book, but the intellectually honest person will also recognize that a human element is involved in the receiving and the interpreting of that revelation. And the human element must be understood first, for it is the medium through which the divine element is communicated.
The human element present in the Gospels is necessarily conditioned by the circumstances under which the Gospels were written. Because these texts were not written until after the death of Jesus, they must be viewed from the perspective of the conditions that prevailed at the time of their writing. In this connection, it is important to remember that the Christian community was in existence for a considerable period of time and that it came into existence because a group of people believed that the man Jesus who had been crucified was the long-awaited Messiah. The Christian community was convinced that his life had met with divine approval and that his death was not the result of any wrongdoing on his part. He died for a righteous cause and in so doing achieved victory over the forces of evil, for he did not yield to any temptations in order to save himself. He was, in the Christians' judgment, the Messiah about whom the Old Testament prophets had spoken. By the time the Gospels were written, stories preserved orally by those who associated with Jesus were viewed in light of more recent events and interpreted in accordance with the beliefs that had become firmly established in the biographers' minds. Reconstructing the original stories as they existed prior to later interpretations of them has been one of the main tasks of what is known as "form criticism." Although the methods used for this purpose have their limitations, these methods are of value as a means toward understanding the New Testament.
